From Memes to Infowars: How 75 Fascist Activists Were “Red-Pilled”

The vast majority of domestic terror attacks in the U.S. are carried out by white supremacist organizations. Atomwaffen, a neo-Nazi death squad with five killings to their name, is probably the deadliest fascist group to have arisen since 2016. One member of Atomwaffen, Vasillios Pistolis, was an active duty U.S. marine when he marched at the first Unite the Right rally. Pistolis also posted regularly on a series of fascist and white supremacist Discord servers, prior to and after joining Atomwaffen.

The media collective Unicorn Riot has archived hundreds of thousands of posts from these Discord servers. Their database includes dozens of conversations where fascists discuss how they were converted to their extremist beliefs. In an effort to understand that process, Bellingcat collected “red-pilling” stories from seventy-five fascist activists. The analysis is below, details on the activists we studied can be found here.

What is red-pilling?

An online community develops its own lingo over time. Among fascist activists “red-pilling” means converting someone to fascist, racist and anti-Semitic beliefs. The term originates with “The Matrix,” a popular 1999 film. The protagonist is offered the choice between a red pill, which will open his eyes to the reality of a machine-dominated world, and a blue pill, which will return him to ignorance and safety. The definition of “red pill,” as used by fascists, is rather elastic. Films and songs are described as “red pilled” if they reinforce a far-right worldview. At least one poster referred to amphetamines as red-pilled.

There appears to be no agreed-upon standard for when a human being is red-pilled. Most fascist activists agree that acknowledgement of the Jewish Question, or JQ, is critical. This means believing that Jewish people are at the center of a vast global conspiracy. The end goal of this conspiracy is usually described as “white genocide”, but there are numerous variations.

Red pilling is described as a gradual process. Individual people can be red-pilled on certain issues and not others. Stefan Molyneux, a popular author and far-right YouTube personality, is seen as being red-pilled on race and “the future of the west” even though he is not considered as a fascist. Prominent YouTuber PewPewDie is also often considered red-pilled. It is accepted that media personalities need to hide their outright fascist beliefs, or “power level”, in order to have a chance at red-pilling the general population (usually called “normies”).

How to red-pill others is a constant topic of conversation. In this thread one user talks about how he “skirted the jew question” in order to red-pill a co-worker. Instead, he claims to have exploited his co-worker’s hatred of “SJW”s, a.k.a. social justice warriors. Other users advise starting the red-pilling process with the JQ. Disagreements mainly center around which techniques are most effective. The overall goal is quite clear.

The “normie” to fascist pipeline

President Donald Trump is seen as having red-pilled many Americans. A number of fascist activists credit his candidacy as the start of their awakening. This conversation between users Buddy Hobbs and ecce_lux is a useful breakdown of how that looks.

“The great meme war” is a reference to time this user spent on 4chan and possibly 8chan, creating far-right memes in order to red-pill other people during the election. The whole exchange paints a picture of a man who was initially ensnared by candidate Trump’s rhetoric and then driven towards far-right media and, eventually, extremist communities on 4chan. There his commitment to fascist ideology crystalized.

The vast majority of fascist activists are male. Some of these men even doubt that women can be red-pilled. The fewusers who identify themselves as female tend to be quite extreme in their beliefs. This is consistent with research into the demographics of the far-right done by the Institute for Family Studies. Fascist and white nationalist organizations are “overwhelmingly male,” yet women are more likely to identify with such beliefs.

The American fascist movement has been male-dominated since at least the aftermath of the Vietnam war. The role of veterans in founding many early far-right organizations may be one explanation as to why. It is also likely that the demographics of certain online communities plays a role. 70% of 4chan users are male, and 4chan is the second most frequently credited website in red-pilling stories.

Thirty-nine of the 75 fascist activists we studied credit the Internet with their red-pilling. YouTube seems to be the single most frequently discussed website. The specific videos credited, however, span a multitude of creators, from British YouTuber Sargon of Akkad (Carl Benjamin) to Infowars founder Alex Jones.

Many fascist activists cite a multitude of red-pills which were all integral to them arriving at their current beliefs. User barD’s 18 March, 2017 post is a great example of this. Here’s how he traces his journey:

“Get redpilled on Feminism after reading some crazy SJW posts about MLP [My Little Pony] being racist and sexist and anti-lesbian, get redpilled on islam after getting intruiged [sic] by some islamisists [sic] taking in a youtube comments section. Get redpilled on GG (Gamergate) from sargon.”

We see a steady spiral, from arguments in comment sections to far-right YouTube personalities to “the_donald” subreddit to 4chan’s /pol/ board and eventually to fascist Discord servers. This user singles out Sargon of Akkad (British Youtuber Carl Benjamin) for special praise and considers him a major influence. One of Sargon’s most popular video series’ is, “Why Do Men Hate #Feminism?” (Episode #1 is titled “Feminists Hate Women.”)

In later posts barD claims the “gradual red-pilling” of Sargon’s videos stopped him from being a feminist. He also praises Sargon as an “easier step” away from liberal views than outright Nazism. Once he’d taken that step and gotten used to Sargon’s rhetoric, it was easier for him to get used to the more extreme atmosphere of /pol/.

It’s not uncommon for white supremacist, fascist and anti-Semitic beliefs to arise initially as the result of humor. Four of the seventy-five activists we studied mentioned ironic memes as major red-pills. In this thread, a user recalls how his first red-pill came during an argument over an anti-Semitic tweet posted to Facebook.

Another user asks FucknOathMate if he was “only doing it ironically at first,” and he replies: “Well sort of.” He says he knew Jewish people were “weird” and “ran everything,” but he wasn’t yet a Holocaust denier or a fascist. Again, we see someone sliding gradually into extremist beliefs. Ironic memes gave this individual a chance to get used to the temperature before diving in.

Thirty-six fascist activists traced the start of their red-pilling process to an event that occurred offline. Five of these people credited their families with red-pilling them. For the other thirty-one, methods ran a rather wide gamut.

Four fascists say they were red-pilled while tripping on LSD. User Europa is a typical example of this trend. He claims his interest in Nazism started in childhood, with his dad watching Hitler documentaries “every day.” Europa carried this interest into adulthood, watching Hitler documentaries and speeches while taking LSD. This convinced him to start “researching” Nazism which, eventually, inspired him to become an activist.

Other activists cite living in a diverse area, reading a copy of Mein Kampf, mass-shooter Anders Brevik’s manifesto and numerous other factors as their first red-pills. Since our study of these activists is based on messages they exchanged with each other online, we can conclude that even when indoctrination begins offline new converts inevitably go online to deepen their beliefs.

Internet communities and social media services have been integral to the recent growth of the fascist right. The rest of this article will focus on the major online sources of fascist red-pilling.

4chan

Ten of our seventy-five fascists credited 4chan with red-pilling them. Many other activists have referenced it as a place that was critical in their radicalization. The /pol/ board is generally seen as a breeding ground for young fascists. Anticom founder Haupsturmfuhrer Pepe credits 4chan as the site that has “redpilled the most” people. For a number of activists, 4chan is the last “mainstream” website they frequent before getting involved with explicitly fascist media.

In this post, Auralevels claims that 4chan led him to The Right Stuff (referred to as “TRS”) and The Daily Stormer (“stormer”), two neo-Nazi news and culture sites (a recent Daily Stormer article was titled, “Disney’s Jew CEO Admits They Kiked the Goyim with Too Many Star Wars Movies,” to give an example of the kind of materials they publish).

4chan and its descendant 8chan make up a large chunk of what is commonly known as the alt-right. These places are considered fairly moderate by fascist activists in the Discord conversations presented. The alt-right is often referred to as the “alt-light.” The intent seems to be halfway between a term of endearment and an insult. Fascist activists view the alt-right as silly, but also as a crucial recruiting ground.

This view is common but not universal. Some activists accuse the so-called alt-light of “paralyzing the supply chain”. They accuse them of allowing “normies” to feel radical for reading sites like Breitbart, while meanwhile “[they] don’t realize that those are quite literally (((controlled op)))…” The use of parentheses here is meant to convey the belief that such websites are secretly run by Jewish elites in order to split the right.

Despite these doubts, it’s clear that 4chan’s /pol/ and other alt-right communities provided a great deal of the fascist right’s manpower. Three of the fascists we studied praised the so-called “the Kekosphere.” “kekism” and “kek” with their red-pilling.

I should note that one of the more frustrating elements about covering the fascist right is that much of what they say sounds ridiculous and makes them appear less than serious. This is why it is important to remember that these groups have a body count and represent a real threat. Their absurdity does not negate their danger.

Kek is a term that first appeared in the MMORPG World of Warcraft. The two sides in that game, Horde and Alliance, were not supposed to communicate with one another. So when a member of one side chatted at another, their words were run through a filter to make it sound like a foreign language. When Horde players would type “lol,” it was translated as “kek”. Over time “kek” became another way of expressing laughter online. On 4chan’s /pol/ board kek took on a grander meaning and came to embody the essence of the “meme magic” that first made the alt-right so prominent. The cultural rock tumbler of /pol/ eventually transmuted kek into Kekistan, a fictional ethno-state for “shitposters.”

Kekistan first became prominent with the enthusiastic endorsement of YouTuber Sargon of Akkad. And for many people, including Sargon, Kekistan is just a dumb Internet joke. In 2017 Sargon of Akkad announced that he would try to register “Kekistani” as an official ethnic group for the 2020 U.K. census. This all unraveled into a parody of the refugee crisis.

And over time Kekistan came to be used as something of a Trojan horse by the fascist right. One good example is the flag of Kekistan.

This design of the flag, benign at first glance, is just a color-inverted variant of the German Kriegsflagge (battle flag) from the Nazi era.

You can see the whole USAF video here. It’s frustratingly light on details. The contractor wearing this flag may just be a channer who finds Kekistan funny. He may be a committed fascist signaling to his comrades. Or he may be somewhere in between, finding himself pulled further and further towards extremism as time goes on. When this footage went viral, the contractor was fired by his employer, MAG Aerospace.

While 4chan’s /pol/ board is the most common source of Internet-based red-pills, a close second appears to be the Infowars media network of famed American conspiracy theorist Alex Jones.

The influence of Infowars

Six of our fascist activists credit Alex Jones with red-pilling them. Jones has been a prominent radio and Internet conspiracy theorist since the mid-1990s and is the founder of the media organization Infowars. Jones first rose to prominence when he served as executive producer on Loose Change, a series of films that began in 2005 and which helped ignite the “9/11 Truther” movement.

Two more activists on our list credit Infowars editor Paul Joseph Watson with their red-pilling. Conspiracy theories appear to be one of the more well-trodden roads into fascist nationalism. This may have something to do with the fact that lack of interpersonal trust and employment insecurity are heavily correlated with belief in conspiracy theories. In 1995 Umberto Eco wrote that at the center of fascist psychology was, “…the obsession with a plot, possibly an international one.” He believed that this was because fascist believers needed to feel “besieged”.

She explains later that she was “was conspiracy pilled,” but also says she and her husband weren’t red-pilled until the Pulse nightclub massacre. A number of other fascist activists say their journey to the far right started with conspiracy theories. Kombat-Unit, one of the most prominent posters in these Discord conversations, at one point notes his approval of this source of new converts; “if you can get some guys through UFO stuff I’m not complaining.” In response, another user says:

Alex Jones and Infowars are also viewed with skepticism by many fascist activists. Some disregard them as “controlled opposition.” The general opinion seems to be that Jones is useful, but far too milquetoast for people who cheerfully support National Socialism.

Most episodes of Alex Jones’s popular streaming and radio shows center on him exposing aspects of a grand “globalist” conspiracy to take over the world. Everything from mass shootings to terrorist attacks is accused of being staged at the behest of these globalists. A number of fascist activists use the term “globalist” as a synonym for “Jewish.” It is not hard to find people who have interpreted Jones’ work this way:

Infowars reached the height of its influence as a result of sites like Facebook and YouTube. By the time they were kicked off of YouTube, Infowars had more than 2.4 million followers and 1.6 billion page views across 36,000 videos. It is likely that banning Infowars will reduce the flow of recruits to far right groups. But even without Infowars, YouTube still provides a pathway for those interested in the American fascist movement.

The importance of YouTube

15 out of 75 fascist activists we studied credited YouTube videos with their red-pilling. In this thread, a group of white supremacists debate with a “civic nationalist” who says he won’t judge an entire race by the actions of a few. It is suggested that he watch a video by American Renaissance, a white supremacist publication. The video, “What the Founders Really Thought About Race,” is essentially a history lesson about why the U.S. founding fathers thought race-mixing was bad. It endorses genocide, via the bearded face of James Garfield:

Fascists who become red-pilled through YouTube often start with comparatively less extreme right-wing personalities, like Ben Shapiro or Milo Yiannopolous.

One user explained that he was a “moderate republican” before “Steven Crowder, Paul Joseph Watson, Milo Yiannopolos, Black Pidgeon Speaks,” and other far-right YouTubers slowly red-pilled him. Over time he “moved further and further right until [he] could no longer stand them. That’s why [he likes] those groups even still, because if we just had the Fascists, we’d never convert anyone.”

Other YouTubers like JonTron also come up in red-pilling discussions. At least three fascists credit Sargon of Akkad with starting their journey. An equal number credit Milo Yiannopoulos. Steven Crowder is referenced as a great red-piller. The users who talk about these creators appear to have watched a great number of their videos. Creators are referenced more often than specific videos.

There is, however, one single video that is mentioned repeatedly. Fourseparateactivistsall identified 2013’S The Greatest Story Never Told as their red-pill.

Producer Dennis Wise intended The Greatest Story Never Told to present a “more balanced and truthful” depiction of World War II. The documentary is almost six hours long and clunkily edited. It completely leaves out the Holocaust. It is a surprising candidate for the most influential single piece of modern fascist propaganda, but it may in fact be that. Or it may just be the most memorable piece of propaganda consumed by several young men on their long and twisted roads to radicalization.

Human beings are not simple creatures, and so no person’s journey to such an extremist belief system can be boiled down to just “YouTube did it” or “4chan did it.” Millions of people have been exposed to ironic racism and /pol/ without going on to don a swastika armband. Radicalization is a process, and the goal of this study is to reveal several of the factors that can act to prime and nudge a young mind from laughing at Holocaust jokes to truly believing that Hitler did nothing wrong.

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Robert Evans has worked as a conflict journalist in Iraq and Ukraine and reported extensively on far-right extremist groups in the United States. He's particularly interested in the ways terrorist groups recruit, radicalize and communicate through the Internet. He has a podcast on the HowStuffWorks network (https://www.behindthebastards.com) and you can contact him via revanswriter@gmail.com or Twitter: https://twitter.com/IwriteOK

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203 Comments

Most of the article says the truth about red pilling, but all analysis and examples are taken from fascist-nazis red pilling, correct? Now, for the sake of honesty, what about communist red pilling? What about religious groups (small and big) red pilling? What about the way public school conform (educate) kids? What about Tv debates, radio debates….in several cases also the movie industry has a subtle red pilling approach. Red pilling is about consent, is about convincing somebody to believe something, right? What about teaching are people to love “their” country then?
The question is: should we censor only nazis red pilling, or all forms of red pilling?
I make a decent proposal to all readers and writers: stop censoring and try to give a morality to it.
For major tecniques in red pilling I propose this reading, which at least is not about ideology but scientifically analyze fact with real exampleshttps://www.slideshare.net/venetianlanguage/a-grammar-of-consent
regards

Note that 0 deaths have been caused by communist terrorism. That’s no actually a category of left-wing terrorism, statistically speaking. Categories of left-wing extremism include things like eco-terrorists (0 deaths this century), and debatably black nationalists (8 deaths this century).

More to the point, though, left-wing domestic terrorism is not the problem. Right-wing domestic terrorism and Islamic terrorism are. Other categories of domestic terrorism are negligible (insofar as any human life can be negligible). This article focuses on the former: right-wing domestic terrorism.

____________________

In short, the problem with your view is an utter lack of *any* sense of prioritization. Some problems are significantly bigger than others, and putting them on equal footing only serves to obfuscate.

This seems like a fantasy problem. The NYTimes article discusses 5 killings associated with Atomwaffen, but two of those were members of Atomwaffen killed by a Muslim student. The other three just seem to be domestic violence incidents. I will get worried about the far right more when I see them regularly rioting in many different cities in the same way that Antifa has done hundreds of times in the last few years.

There’s the texas guy, he was certainly left wing, he was motivated against religious people by left wing dogma, and followed CNN and a couple of hard left atheist pages.
There’s also the kansas guy.

Not to mention that this guy got converted not only to islam but to bamns ideology, the ex atomwaffen guy, so he was actually not right wing, to the contrary. And it makes sense, he went from one kind of retarded to another.

And honestly here’s how skewed this shit is. Hard left wing criminals who commit robbery followed by murder should all be classed in this if they are from the “property damage is justified due to wealth inequality” and other similar dogmas.
But they aren’t.

I’d like to emphasize that the political spectrum is not as one-dimensional as you imply here. For example, “9-11 Truthers” come in every color, nationality, and social / religious background. “Normie” is a term used in many counter-cultures, including LGBTQ, punk/goth/metal, pagan, nature-loving “hippy”, or any social group that is skeptical of consumerist culture. Researching alternative points of view does not a fascist make. That’s akin to saying marijuana is a gateway drug to heroin, or that questioning authority leads to patricide/murder-suicide.

I’ve noticed a disturbing trend among the Antifa: categorizing all views that one disagrees with as “alt-right” and reifying it as a unified movement. In doing so, they are giving power to the more sinister agents who would love to have a unified far-right movement in the west (E.G. real Nazis, or the Russian Federation). Is that not the same sort of tribalism that got Drumpf most of his votes?

Is it not human nature to lash out at the “other” when they feel powerless?

Antifascists don’t categorize everything they disagree with as fascist, it’s the other way around. They actively categorically disagree with everything fascist. Fascism is observed and then opposed, not the other way around. Thank you for your entry.

Total number of people killed by right-wing domestic terrorists this century: 94
Total number of people killed by Islamic domestic terrorists this century: 104
Total number of people killed by all other forms of domestic terrorism: 8

Red pilling is also widely used to signify a shift from liberal views to conservative. Liberal scholars like Dr. Jonathan Haidt show a great deal of evidence about how academia suppresses conservative viewpoint. When people begin to fact check an entirely left wing echo chamber many find they have been lied to and conservative positions have been grossly misrepresented. Scenarios emerge like where Cathy Newman interviews Peterson so sire of herself and finds sjr has no ground to stand on. People say je is a nazi but he actively pulls people away from it. To some, “anything right of stalin must be hitler.”

Concepts like race essentialism sold by writers like Coates are celebrated by the far left. but those who embrace those premises can be more easily flipped to the far right as Richard Spencer expressed in the NYT to Thomas Chatterton Williams in his review of Coates. The new yorker also had a story about a leftist who became far right.

If you are a hard left authoritarian you actually have much in common with the right. Consider hatred of Jews. It has been reported that the womens march leaders have excluded jewish women from power, embezzled funds, hired nation of islam as security, are big fans of Farrakhan. He has described hitler as ‘a great man’ and said many things about jews that are indistinguishable from the far right. The outrage about that is how leftists lose faith; as is observing the eerie near silence in response to such revelations. This is because political expedience and mob mentality override principle.

It does the left no favours to lie or double down on myths debunked decades ago. (Which fit their biases and so are not fact checked honestly.) If you ensure you follow moderate left and right news you will see examples of this almost constantly. For example we do not see the left writing much about Rotherham. Most liberals i know have not heard of it.

Domestic right-wing terrorists have killed 94 people this century.
Domestic Islamic terrorists have killed 104 people this century.
All other forms of domestic terrorism have killed 8 people this century.

From the perspective of a Jewish person familiar with these online spaces, I find your writeup amusing but strongly comes off as you having started with conclusions and then selectively interpreted data in a way that supports them.

Ultimately I don’t find arguments that the meanderings of 75 cranks on the Internet to be a compelling argument for the rise of white nationalism. Crazies are all over the Internet and their delusions rarely translate to in-person action.

What I would find compelling are images of people at far-right rallies adopting culture and iconography of the online contingent. Indeed, I’ve seen a picture of someone at the far-right rally (might’ve been Charlottesville?) who had a shield with the Kekistani flag on it.

My in-person encounters with various Internet nuts have been rather unusual. I’ve met several alt-right persons who begged me, an individual of the Jewish faith, for information on how to join the “global ruling Jewish elite”. At no point did I feel threatened by them. That’s not to say that some aren’t a threat, but just to point out that just because someone is a nut job doesn’t mean they’ll act out on it

Sadly the only time I have been threatened with violence were by individuals who, full of passion but short of wisdom, wrongly assumed that I was alt-right due to my disagreeing with several conclusions made by another Discord chat log leak researcher.

I like the guy pasting stats on everyones comments about terrorism, failing to realize that more people were killed on the day of 9/11 alone than he is giving credit for this entire century, not to mention things like the Pulse Nightclub shooting, Boston Marathon bombing, etc. The many problems with that study have been widely reported on, how they define things like ‘terrorism’ and ‘mass shooting’. When you see it for what it is its just one more piece of anti-white propaganda.
As far as Antifa goes, you can say they “oppose all fascism” but it looks pretty funny when they say that and then turn around and silence opponents political speech and violently assault people for political reasons.

Yay! Another shitposter propelling a Fascist narrative. I’m not saying antifa are blameless, but their actions are always a reaction to fascism, not the other way round. It’s funny how when you actually watch videos of those “riots,” it’s always the fascists starting the violence. Could it be that a historically violent ideology based entirely on racial hatred is just more prone to instigating violence? Or will you serve up another whataboutism narrative?

Well, considering that this was before the MAGABomber Cesar Alteri Sayoc, the Kroger Louisville/Jeffersontown shooter Gregory Alan Bush (random racist), the Pittsburgh Tree of Life synagogue shooter Robert Gregory Bowers (Gab anti-Semite/Holocaust denier 1488 white nationalist) and the Tallahassee yoga studio shooter Scott Paul Beierle (incel/white nationalist) and now the Christchurch, New Zealand mosques shooter Brenton Harrison Tarrant (Ethno-nationalist, Eco-fascist Oswald Mosley/British Union of Fascists-style) it seems more relevant. But I really feel the article as much as it has some valid points to blame people like Alex Jones or Ben Shapiro for this radicalization is stretching it since most Jones and Shapiro followers do not associate with explictly anti-Semitism and racism.

I think the point of mentioning them is that those people are a “Gateway Drug” for radicalisation, a stepping stone if you will. They lead people down the Path and then those people find other sources to continue on their radicalisation. The fact that they dont actually subscribe to that is not the point. They are doorways and as the article says several times the process is gradualm so some people take up Jones and then leave him behind.

Remember, Alex Jones’s real business is selling overpriced vitamin pills and other health products, so he just wants people distrusting doctors and other authorities who would tell his customers that his products are crap. So he is not interested in promoting any “Jewish Question” as it does not make him any money.

Memes and Youtube lead to more Nazis. All 3 of them. FFS give me a break with this tripe. If y’all didn’t keep up this conspiracy theory that half the country is fascist and of klansmen under your bed you wouldn’t be able to keep this play the victim narrative ALL the damn time. Then we would actually have to talk about shit that matters but none of you want that.

So even in the face of overwhelming evidence you still opt to go into “Ostrich Mode”. That’s pretty telling. To anyone with ounce of integrity, it looks like this article struck a nerve with “the same type of someone” that the article has rightfully labeled as being “the problem”.

First – talking about domestic terrorism – we must thoroughly find out what the heck the dancing israelis were celebrating and high-fiving in the very morning of the 911 WTC-tragedy and why at least two of them were Mossad agents!! and why after arrest they were later sent home without charges.Why Benjamin Natanyahu stated that killing 3000 people in New Youk was “good for Israel”.
Investigating these (and other 911 related) unanswered questions has nothing to do with antisemitism although raises many essential questions about possible state-sponsored terrorism to wage war in the Middle East.

WTC-murders according to Benjamin Natanyahu was good for Israel.
It was not good for Afghanistan, not good for Irak, not good for Syria, not good for Iran.
it was not good for those seven countries supposed to be destroyed in five years – the case ganeral Wesley Clark heard was the plan of USA after 911. The only real “beneficiaree” of that sinister US plot is Israel. Period.